The story of our lives
I am officially the last person on Earth to have discovered scrapbooking.
It’s been popular for — oh, I don’t know — the last five years? And I have consistently walked by the scrapbooking aisle. Ignored the padded leather books, the colourful pages, the sparkly stickers.
It was basically the last craft standing — the one thing I hadn’t tried. And I didn’t have much interest in it.
And then … suddenly … I realized that it was actually a good idea.
While I like displaying framed photos, and even shadowboxing, I never, ever put together albums. I’ve always hated the idea of needing the right size to fit in the clear plastic window, and trying to arrange all of the verticals with the verticals and the horizontals with the horizontals.
With scrapbooking, I reasoned, it would be a nice way to get my photos out of my plastic shoeboxes and into something proper. I could make pages dedicated to trips with Darling Husband, pages dedicated to Little Dog, pages about birthdays and holidays and … everything!
Plus, there are padded leather books. And colourful cardstock! And sparkly stickers!
I’ve been obsessed for a week now, and I have 12 pages finished. I love them. I love the idea that I can make a book that tells the story of my life — and that by flipping through it, you can get a pretty clear idea of the highlights.
My grand plan is to start from the very beginning, and tell the story of me and Darling Husband. I’ll end up having a book of my “early” life — me as a baby, straight up until I met DH at 16. And then all of the books after that will show the events of our lives together, in chronological order.
I absolutely love the idea that one day our kids can flip through these scrapbooks, just like storybooks, and see what life was our lives were like before them.
When Baby makes three, I’ll continue adding pages to our “family” book — trips, holidays, etc. — but also make a special baby book — because hey, who I am to resist the cute pale pink and pale blue albums?
xoxo
P.S. I would make a book of Darling Husband’s early life, but boys don’t keep photos the way girls do, so I don’t think I have enough for one.
P.P.S. Plus, the pack of paper I bought was called “Teen Scene” and includes a lot of pink leopard print and glitter pages. I don’t think he’d appreciate that …
My Husband Rocks
Dear Darling Husband,
We made some big decisions this week.
It all started with money. It always starts with money. I am always reminded that it’s the No. 1 reason couples get divorced, so I hate money arguments.
But this week, when I was falling apart over dollars and cents, you got me through it with common sense — oops, this is turning into a country song.
We made decisions about our future, and what is important to us. I know things will be hard at times. But being able to look at our declaration — our plan — is going to give me strength. Knowing what we are doing has a purpose — a very good purpose — is going to make the sacrifices worthwhile.
Because I would rather eat Kraft Dinner with you and be happy, than eat steak and fight because we’re stressed out about money.
Love, your wife
xoxo
We, the people …
Remember yesterday’s rant on the universe kicking my ass? Well, Darling Husband and I had a really good talk last night — and I do mean talk, not argument, so yay — about everything: our finances, the kind of house we want to buy, how we’re going to survive financially when I’m on maternity leave.
The bottom line was that we both hate feeling stretched so thin. Our current mortgage payments are too huge — and it’s not even a house, which is depressing. Our car payments are expensive. We pay through the nose for gas (ew, bad choice of words).
Since making more money is something we don’t forsee — blah blah blah economy, you know — then our only choice is to cut back. We’ve already scrapped the home phone, dropped some cable packages, and drastically cut back eating out (even on Date Night). Now all that’s left are the big-ticket items: mortage, vehicle, etc.
The stress seem to quadruple when we talked about how we’ll cope when I’m on maternity leave — and, God willing, when I’m officially a SAHM. If we’re tight now, how will we manage then?
Well, this is what we have decided … a “declaration of (financial) independence, if you will …
To us, the most important things are:
- I can stay at home with our children while they’re young
- We live within our means, so we are not always worried about money
- We do not work ourselves to the point of exhaustion/unhappiness
- We do things together as a family
- We always remember that a strong marriage is one of the best things we can give our children
To reach the above goals, we are willing to sacrifice:
- A big house
- A fancy vehicle
- Elaborate trips
- The latest gadgets
- Material stuff we don’t need
In order to archive financial security and — more importantly — happiness, we will be content with happy and grateful for:
- A not-so-big house: We would rather live in a smaller space, than buy something large that causes us financial stress. I admit that I originally told Darling Husband to only search for homes with four bedrooms — because hey! We want a lot of kids — but now we’ve agreed to look for smaller places. A smaller home = a smaller mortgage = bigger smiles.
- A modest car: Yup, we’re going to be tradin’ in the SUV for something with cheaper payments (and easier on gas). This was a hard decision, because we are big-vehicle-lovin’ people. But it must be done.
- Modest vacations: We still want to take our family on trips — and with Darling Husband working in the airline industry, it’s more afforable for us than most — but we’ll do our research first to find good deals. And we love to camp, which is a pretty cheap vacay.
- What we have: Back in the day, we were one of the first people we knew to buy a PS2 … then a PS3 … then a Wii. And we admit, we have a pretty sweet big-screen. Although we love-love-love gadgets — especially computers — we have reached a point where we have more … um … self-control.
- Buying what we need (and ignoring what we don’t): I used to pick up cute little tops and dresses like they were bread and milk — that is, regularly. Very regularly. But I haven’t allowed myself near a clothing store in months, and it’s definitely paid off. I haven’t been running around naked, so obviously I already had plenty of clothes.
Basically we are transitioning from early twenty-somethings who heart buying stuff (and having nice things), to late twenty-somethings (gulp!) who have realized that life is not about cool stuff.
It’s about being happy — which we’re not, when we’re worried about money — and being grateful for what we have — not whining about everything we can’t afford. And I would much rather have less and be a happier person, than have stuff and being a nervous wreck.
Cheers to financial independence, and choosing happiness over a life of financial stress!
The universe is kicking my ass
Last week, in a fit of “living-like-there’s-no-tomorrow” and “all-we-do-is-work-and-we-never-do-anything-fun,” I took action.
Yup, I threw caution to the wind and booked a little birthday mini-trip with Darling Husband.
We are not — I repeat, not — spontaneous people. We are “let’s-plan-for-months-and-agonize-over-whether-or-not-we-can-afford-it” people. To just book a trip, randomly, was huge.
And, of course, this week I regret it.
A casual conversation about finances — although when do financial conversations ever remain casual, really? — turned into an unpleasant realization, when we discussed the balances of our credit cards.
Ow. Let’s just say that they were higher than I expected, and if I had known that last week, I would never have agreed to the trip. I’m sure you can fill in the blanks, right?
Utimately, we decided we’ll still go. However, it’s definitely taken a bit of the fun out of the trip. Now I can think about is how the money would be better spent paying down our credit cards.
So basically, when we work hard and try to be responsible little savers, we are told to “live like there’s no tomorrow” and have fun. But when we actually do try to have a little fun, we’re slammed with guilt about the money we’re spending.
What’s the deal, Universe???
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Heather's Handmade Life 